Daz in the Kitchen: Tangy tagliatelle with prawns, tomato, spinach and garlic

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Tangy tagliatelle with prawns, tomato, spinach and garlic

Since we've moved, we have been shopping at Aldi rather than our usual Coles because it is much more budget friendly and we can get about 90% of what we are looking for, for our cooking and grocery needs. Plus The Boy has retired now and we need to just watch our spending.

The thing I like about Aldi is that each week they have some kind of themed special and this week it was "gourmet" week. It was great fun as they had some lovely Italian finishing balsamic vinegars, whole truffles in jars, seasoned sea salt, and some great handmade Italian egg pasta noodles.

I picked up some rather fancy tomato and chili tagliatelle and decided to come up with a tasty dish of my own. I had this idea that I didn't want a "sauce" for the pasta per se, but rather, I wanted to dress it in some olive oil, garlic and lemon.

This is what I came up with:

Ingredients:

250g tagliatelle pasta
6 cloves garlic, minced
250g grape tomatoes, halved
60g baby spinach (half of a 120g bag)
30 prawns (medium sized)
Juice of 1 lemon
6 tablespoons olive oil
Salt

Instructions:

Put water to boil for pasta, add some olive oil and salt into the water. While the water is coming to a boil, prep all your ingredients. When water is boiling put in tagliatelle, cook for 6 - 7 minutes, until pasta is al dente.
While pasta is cooking, in a large wok or frying pan, put in some olive oil and the prawns. When the prawns are lightly cooked, add in the garlic and cook for about 1 minute (you do not want to brown the garlic, just cook it a little bit). This should be about 3 to 4 minutes into the pasta cooking at this point.
Then add in the tomatoes and cook for a minute or two. Add more olive oil, you need enough olive oil to coat all the pasta.
After tomatoes have cooked for a while, (the pasta should be ready now) add in spinach and stir around to cook the spinach.
Add lemon juice and continue cooking.
Drain the pasta and put the cooked pasta into the frying pan. Stir the pasta around so that it is coated in all the olive oil and lemon juice and the flavor of the sauce. Taste and add salt, if necessary.
Serve and eat immediately.
Enjoy!

This recipe turned out super tasty. The lemon in the dressing just added a special tanginess to the flavor of the pasta that was sensational.

I even went so far to say that this dish is definitely fit for company and I will definitely make it again and even do it when we have company.

Now, I know I said that I used a tomato and chili (hence the redness of the pasta in the picture!) tagliatelle, but really, any tagliatelle will do, and if you prefer, even try it with linguine or fettuccine. I think both of those will be lovely with this dish as well.